{"id":7736,"date":"2019-08-16T15:59:44","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T19:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7736"},"modified":"2019-08-16T15:59:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T19:59:52","slug":"review-whered-you-go-bernadette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7736","title":{"rendered":"Review: WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The begged question: where are all the women architects?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Best way to enjoy an epistolary novel: see the movie adaptation first.

Characters are sorted, unnecessary ones discarded, or at least given less letters\/emails\/texts to write; the story line is focused, the dialogue scaled down, yet voluble.\u00a0 And snappy. If \u00a0there is a smidgen of humor to be found in the novel, \u00a0a good screenwriter will turn the adaptation into a clever comedy.

(Fair warning: the only \u201ccorrespondence-literature\u201d I have liked are Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula\u201d and Jean Webster\u2019s \u201cDaddy Long Legs.\u201d\u00a0 Both read when I was 12.)

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Cate Blanchett as Bernadette Fox.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Maria Semple is lucky to have her 2012 bestseller \u201cWhere\u2019d You Go, Bernadette\u201d treated with the reverence AND amiable disrespect it needs to shake off the preciousness of the novel.\u00a0 Director Richard Linklater has co-written the screenplay with Holly Gent and Vince Palmo and found a winner in Cate Blanchett as the indomitable Bernadette.

Blanchett can dig into a character, imbue her with almost frightening passion, and in the film\u2019s first 20 minutes, her Bernadette is so off, \u00a0so manic, you understand why her female neighbors fear and shun her. When she displays a quirk too many, her annoyed husband (played by Billy Crudup) stages an intervention with a shrink ready to haul Bernadette away.

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Kristen Wiig stars as Audrey and Zoe Chao as Soo-Lin in Richard Linklater\u2019s WHERE\u2019D YOU GO, BERNADETTE. Credit: Wilson Webb \/ Annapurna Pictures<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Bernadette disappears first.\u00a0 She has a tendency to do that.\u00a0 Twenty years earlier, as a recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, Bernadette was hailed as the future of urban architecture. An icon was born. Then poof \u2013 gone. \u00a0The only house she ever built – the first Green House \u2013 gone.\u00a0 Why? What was the Huge Hideous Thing that derailed her career?

Unraveling a long-ago trauma makes us see Bernadette as the person she was meant to be:\u00a0 not the unhappy housewife holed up in a ramshackle house on a hill, but a joyous spirit, meant to soar and create thrilling wonders.\u00a0 Her old college professor (Laurence Fishburne) sums her up: \u201cIf you don\u2019t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.\u201d

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Emma Nelson as Bee Branch.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Of the many questions \u201cWhere\u2019d You Go, Bernadette\u201d raises, the least interesting one is if Bernadette will be found. What this movie makes you wonder is, \u201cwhat happened to all the women architects? Surely they exist?\u201d

You know your Famous Architects (the \u201cStarchitects\u201d).\u00a0 There is God\u2019s own architect (Antoni Gaudi), the crossword guy (IM Pei), \u00a0the waterfall \u00a0guy (Frank Lloyd Wright), the funny guy (Frank Gehry), the brutalist (Le Corbusier), and the\u00a0Finn (Eero Sarinen).\u00a0 All guys.\u00a0 There is Zaha Hadid, of course, the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker prize, architecture\u2019s Oscar, but then? Google gives you two \u2013 TWO \u2013 women\u2019s names, both unknown to me: Denise Scott Brown and Jeanne Gang.

Google also leads you to a recent NYT article about the dearth of women architects: half of all architect students today are women, but few (barely 20%) stick with the industry. Inherent gender inequality is one explanation. Until 1972, with the adoption of Title IX of the education amendments, most US architecture schools would not admit women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Billy Crudup stars as Elgie Branch.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So Bernadette had to endure professional disrespect, which might explain her mental instability, but a second interesting theme of the film concerns the lack of acceptance given people with extraordinary talents. Especially women with those talents. \u00a0Perhaps extra leeway should be afforded gifted women when they fail to act within societal norms?

Bernadette\u2019s daughter Bee (Emma Nelson) certainly thinks so. \u00a0A defender of her brilliant mother, Bee is an unusual movie teen in that she actually gets along with the parental unit she is supposed to hate.

Billy Crudup\u2019s Elgie is the standard Hollywood Husband, though.\u00a0 The family has relocated to Seattle where busy, elitist, fawned-over Elgie is \u201cswallowed whole\u201d by Microsoft.\u00a0 Crudup\u2019s good looks normally makes up for conventionally written characters, here they falter. \u00a0

Kristen Wiig shows up in the important part of Bernadette\u2019s frenemy neighbor Audrey, and Laurence Fishburne adds heft and sensibility as the mentor who still sees Bernadette as the brilliant student she once was.

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Mercy finds many nagging questions lurking in Linklater’s latest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1705,1704,1702,1295,213,79,1701,966],"class_list":["post-7736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-architect","tag-bernadette","tag-billy-crudup","tag-cate-blanchett","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-laurence-fishburne","tag-richard-linklater","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7745,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736\/revisions\/7745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}